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I don’t know if you’ve ever wondered what God is “doing to you” before—say in taking away a job that you loved, or in causing you to lose a relationship that you had really valued; or even by giving you a stress or a burden that you supposed you could not handle—I don’t know if you’ve ever wondered what God is “up to” before, but consider for a moment the plight of Mary.

Everything was going along just fine, she probably thought, until God got involved! Like most young gals, Mary probably had great dreams; dreams of a beautiful traditional wedding. The whole village would gather to celebrate the nuptials of Joseph and herself. Dreams of raising a family. Perhaps raising crops. Starting a business. And then one day, apparently out of nowhere, Mary receives a stunning, beautiful, shocking and upsetting announcement. Mary will conceive, out of full wedlock, and she being a virgin (untouched, innocent, sexually pure) will bear the Messiah. Luke 1:29 says it best, Mary was greatly troubled at these words.

I want to ask a great question. Maybe the greatest question that has ever been asked and certainly one what would plague Mary for those nine months of pregnancy: Why would God see fit to visit humanity by means of a miraculous virgin birth? Or to say it another way, why would God become man at all? I suppose there could have been any number of possibilities for how God could save the world: He could have sent down a fully formed, mature man from the Heavens. He could have taken a normal guy out of any Jerusalem street and “zapped” him into a divine messenger. But no, God chose to become a man himself in order to redeem the world. In this article, I want to ask one of the greatest theological questions that can ever be pondered: Why did God choose to save the world through the incarnation of Christ?

(Read the full article by clicking on the Pastor's Desk button on the left).